


A Sure Sign of Transience

by anna_bird



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-12
Updated: 2009-12-12
Packaged: 2017-10-04 09:08:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anna_bird/pseuds/anna_bird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for sheafrotherdon's someecard mini-fest.  In step with season 5 but veers into AU before "The Shrine."</p>
    </blockquote>





	A Sure Sign of Transience

**Author's Note:**

  * For [were_duck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/were_duck/gifts).



> Written for sheafrotherdon's someecard mini-fest. In step with season 5 but veers into AU before "The Shrine."

"Funny, Sheppard.  Hilarious.  Side-splitting.  Uproarious.  Dare I say it - even - hysterical."

 

 John lifted his eyebrows. "What?"  

 

It was bullshit innocence, Rodney could tell.  John always tried for casual and missed by a country light year - usually he ended up looking like he'd cinched his belt too tight.  Sneaky, conspiring, backstabbing - 

 

"McKay.  What'd I do?"

 

"What did you do?  Hey, everyone."  Rodney turned back to face the control room, which was packed full of Atlantis employees who clearly had no interest in him or in Sheppard at the moment.  Their full attention was focused on Ronon and Keller, the latter who, judging by the lingering location of her mouth, had clearly forgotten any promise she'd made to spend Valentine's Day (and night, fingers crossed and prepping for a workout) with Rodney.  In actuality the city was officially celebrating the Athosian version of the holiday, which was less about chocolate-flowers-sex and more directly about a week-long celebration of nostalgia which culminated in a Sharing Ceremony after you presented your chosen partner with something reminiscent of your first meeting.  It was practically hive-inducing.  

 

Rodney had ransacked his bathroom until he'd found the antipsychotic Jennifer had prescribed him in her first week.  It was a foolproof gesture.  She would have laughed, and they could have cemented their flirtation into something substantial like - well, he'd been waiting for the right moment.  And now this.  It was a knife in the back.  A hybrid Satedan-USAF knife.

 

God.  Would everyone just stop grinning? 

 

Rodney stepped forward. "Come on, wipe off those goofy smiles and shake the doe-eyed glaze, you all look like someone spiked the reservoir with Chris Isaak CDs and Night Train."  Chuck glared, but who cared about Chuck?  "What did you do, Sheppard? I think it's pretty obvious!  Ask any of these zombies -  oh my god, someone did spike the water, even Zelenka's misty-eyed."

 

"Pipe down, McKay," Woolsey chided.  He coughed and swiped surreptitiously at his moist eyes with a pocket handkerchief.  "Let's enjoy the romance - it's so rare to appreciate a courtship in these times of uncertainty."

 

Some of the people near them muttered vaguely threatening agreement.  Radek made a complicated gesture of obscenity in his direction, and Rodney rolled his eyes.

 

"I thought - " wait, where had he gone?  Oh.  Sheppard had stepped back to lean against the wall.  "I thought he wasn't interested in Jennifer," Rodney hissed, slipping back next to him.  "He was only egging me on, to get me to go after her.  She told me so."

 

A group of botanists clustered beside Amelia Banks' station suddenly erupted into swoony sighs as Keller wrapped her arms around Ronon's neck.  Amelia looked carefully blank, and Rodney had a moment of sympathetic bitter comfort.

 

"I don't think Keller's one to limit her options," John murmured.  "Especially when they're so...broad.  She's smarter than that."

 

Rodney clenched his fists and tried to keep his expression straight.  It had been funny yesterday, when they'd sat down to eat lunch and John had made him check his email right then and there and the ecard had been waiting in his inbox.  He'd felt ridiculously irritated and pleased and divided... about nothing.  Nothing more than usual.  Because Jennifer wasn't his fiancée yet, and John and he certainly weren't anything, regardless of how much sex they had.

 

*

 

 

"What, like this?" Rodney had asked, and pushed his slice of Pegasus roast beast into his Pegasus mashed yellowroot.  "Whoa, whoa, whoa."

 

Keller had giggled.  She always laughed at his jokes!  In hindsight, this definitely unmasked her as a misdirecting traitor.

 

"So you moved your meat around," Ronon said.  "That means Jennifer's fair game again?"

 

"It is a bad joke," Teyla sighed.  Torren was on her lap, now big enough to be fed massive quantities of yellowroot with a plastic spoon.   "Especially since Jennifer is not yet engaged to anyone."

 

"Hey," Keller said.  "Just don't get any ideas about me being meat, and I'll restrain myself from bringing out the sedatives."

 

Torren chose that moment to throw a handful of yellowroot into John's hair.  And then Rodney had walked Jennifer back to the infirmary, and she had made encouraging noises and he'd almost kissed her cheek and forgot about the stupid card, because it was just a stupid card.  Not even on paper, that was a sure sign of transience, of fleeting flings and every other antithesis of the solid standard family unit.  

 

*

 

Ronon now produced a large soft-looking blue bag and whatever was inside made Keller blush, so Rodney was guessing it wasn't chocolates.  He tried not to watch as they left (presumably to screw themselves into a stupor in privacy).  Somehow everyone managed to keep from blowing kisses after them.  The whole control room felt warmer somehow, the grey consoles less cold and angular, the faces of the crew (save Banks) curved and smiling and soft.  Woolsey was trying to enfold Teyla, Torren and Kanaan in a group hug.  They all looked sated, like they'd drunk the pink from Keller's cheeks.  Rodney felt a bit of it himself; it spread persistent against the twisting disappointment in his gut. 

 

Which was why, he decided, it took him so long to notice the warmth of a hand on the back of his neck.

 

"Cheer up, Rodney," John said.  One of his fingers stroked under the lobe of Rodney's ear, gentle and quick and completely unsubtle.  "You can always hang out with me when you've got nothing better to do."

 

And Rodney knew he was generally pretty oblivious, but he wasn't a moron.

 

* 

 

"You planned it.  Stupid ecard and Ronon and all.  You were jealous.  Of Jennifer," Rodney angled his hips and pushed in slowly, gently.  

 

John pushed back against him.  "Hah."

 

"You are a jealous uncommunicative jerk who can't bring himself to discuss his feelings like a - rational person - with - with words and - god, god - spoken words, oh no, you have to send juvenile little internet notes."  The mattress jerked as John twitched under him.  

 

"Uh huh.  God.  Well.  You move your meat this time, I'll kill you," John said in a strangled voice, and Rodney's arms trembled.  He reconfigured his grip in the sheets and concentrated on not coming, on fucking John as agonizingly slowly as he could because this was the extent of his control; this, this, John's ass under his groin and belly, John's ribs under his fingers, John surrounding him with the rub and press of skin on skin.  

 

"Oh, I'll move it,"  The hell.  Rodney wondered if he (or both of them?) had mysteriously internalized Roadhouse-era Patrick Swayze sometime during the day.  An alien Swayze virus, unbeknownst to Atlantis personnel, security sensors, and general troublemakers who were too stupid to have a good time.  "And you'll like it."  

 

John snorted and gasped and flexed, and Rodney practically had to call up Iratus bug images, but that was a lost cause because for some reason it shot his kink factor off the damn chart, and only in the Pegasus Galaxy, for crying out loud.  The hot slide in, the sound John made as Rodney pulled almost all the way out - it was unbearable.  He gave up, lost the careful slow build and slammed into John.

 

"Couldn't get you to - be here with - with - to be here otherwise," John gritted out, and came.

 

 

Afterward, he curled up against the hot length of John's back, and buried his face between John's shoulder blades.  The drift of drowsiness was taking him, and he couldn't keep his mouth shut.

 

"By the way, I, uhm, sent you one of those absurd little ecards.  Well, actually, that's not precisely true, I sent you a couple.  A few.  Because I admit it, the whole site's quite addictive once you get going - "

 

"I know you did," John said sleepily, and wiggled back against him.  "Lucky for you, _I'm_ not picky. Or - " He yawned, and Rodney felt the bone-crack shiver of it against his forehead - "easily offended."

 

"Just desperately jealous," Rodney mumbled.    

 

He wondered what had been in the blue bag.  It was funny, funny-sad, really, because now that he thought about it, the antipsychotic meds were a little unromantic and certainly not likely to have made Keller blush.  Given more time, he of course could have come up with something fantastic and guaranteed to blow her mind.  Given more time.  Granted, it was difficult to think at the moment, what with being under the sheets and the taste in his mouth and John hogging on the top blanket so it pulled away and left Rodney's back out in cold.

 

He had nothing from his first meeting with John, not really.  Rodney didn't usually keep things - he wasn't a packrat by nature - he used things, because that was what you were supposed to do.  You ate chocolates, you threw away flowers when they died.  You used a gun, a laptop, a tac vest until those things broke and you requisitioned new ones.  John had given him a gun.  Farther back.  The chair, the gate, the way to Atlantis itself - would he be here without John, without his gene?  Not likely.  And if being in Atlantis, living and working in another galaxy wasn't the height of a desperate secret wish, then Rodney was a card-carrying NRA member and Zelenka washed his hair with peanut butter.  What had he given John, if not the same thing?

 

But he was degenerating into nonsense.  He was pleasantly warm, apart from his backside.  His brain was calm, mostly.  It was Athosian Valentine's Day, and there was no place (honestly, honestly now) he'd rather be than nuzzled behind John; warm and constant and enough to make him sleep.

 

 

 


End file.
